Why metallurgy? Why not material science?

by Rishi Mon May 26, 2014 4:54 pm

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/iit-bhubaneshwat-to-introduce-b.tech-in-metallurgy/1/363739.html

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon May 26, 2014 5:26 pm

perhaps they don't have the personnel for a full fledged MSE program which would require besides metallurgists, condensed matter physicists, solid state chemists, ceramists, polymer scientists, and semiconductor device engineers. and these days also engineers with a good deal of biology background. hard to gather such an interdisciplinary program. i am glad they aren't pretending to do that and starting more modestly. they can expand into a full fledged MSE program later.

for a young person who wants to be an engineer, i wouldn't advise a major in metallurgy or MSE. electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or chemical engineering are far better since they provide a very broad based technical education.

by swapna Mon May 26, 2014 6:54 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:perhaps they don't have the personnel for a full fledged MSE program which would require besides metallurgists, condensed matter physicists, solid state chemists, ceramists, polymer scientists, and semiconductor device engineers. and these days also engineers with a good deal of biology background. hard to gather such an interdisciplinary program. i am glad they aren't pretending to do that and starting more modestly. they can expand into a full fledged MSE program later.

for a young person who wants to be an engineer, i wouldn't advise a major in metallurgy or MSE. electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or chemical engineering are far better since they provide a very broad based technical education.

Regardless of where - India, the US, etc - that person is attending college?

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon May 26, 2014 9:28 pm

swapna wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:perhaps they don't have the personnel for a full fledged MSE program which would require besides metallurgists, condensed matter physicists, solid state chemists, ceramists, polymer scientists, and semiconductor device engineers. and these days also engineers with a good deal of biology background. hard to gather such an interdisciplinary program. i am glad they aren't pretending to do that and starting more modestly. they can expand into a full fledged MSE program later.

for a young person who wants to be an engineer, i wouldn't advise a major in metallurgy or MSE. electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or chemical engineering are far better since they provide a very broad based technical education.
Regardless of where - India, the US, etc - that person is attending college?

yes. IMO disciplines like MSE and bioengineering as an undergraduate degree are broad but not sufficiently deep in any respect. for example a chemical engineer takes a transport phenomena class and then follows it up with in depth courses in fluid dynamics (momentum transport), heat transfer, and mass transfer. similarly he starts with unit processes and then follows it up with in depth courses in thermodynamics, kinetics, and reaction engineering. this is a body of knowledge that has both depth and breadth that can be easily extended to other fields. an MSE undergraduate curriculum by contrast often looks like a motley collection of disparate courses without sufficient depth in any particular area. MSE is a great discipline for graduate studies, but i wouldn't recommend it for an undergraduate degree. better preparation for an MSE grad degree is chemical engineering or physics.

by swapna Tue May 27, 2014 2:35 pm

Rishi wrote:http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/iit-bhubaneshwat-to-introduce-b.tech-in-metallurgy/1/363739.html

Notice that the degree is in metallurgy, not metallurgical engineering. In the early years, that's what it was at iit-m also. The emphasis was on physical metallurgy (structure and properties), not mechanical metallurgy (processing). However, I don't see any reference to the old name now. The current name of the department is mme or metallurgical and materials engineering.

I believe that at the Irinjalakkuda Institutes of Technology (IITs), the names of departments largely reflect their objectives; if iit-bhubaneshwar says metallurgy, it means emphasis on physical metallurgy.

I think that, in India, it's easier to find faculty in physical metallurgy than in mechanical metallurgy. IISc, for example, has strong chemistry, and by extension, materials science and (physical) metallurgy groups.

My course in materials science at the Irinjalakkuda Institute of Technology was with S. Ramaseshan, who would later become the Director of IISc.

by MaxEntropy_Man Tue May 27, 2014 3:03 pm

most indian metallurgy programs have also been traditionally strong in what used to be called extractive metallurgy which is indeed processing. you could in some sense think of this as an offshoot of chemical engineering. in this sub-branch there is a heavy emphasis on chemical thermodynamics, transport, and kinetics. students specializing in this went to work for companies like SAIL and tata iron and steel.

mechanical metallurgy as it used to be referred to back in the day is a subset of physical metallurgy where the emphasis is on the correlation of structure and mechanical properties. it also includes how to use mechanical deformation to effect shape change. you could if you like call it mechanical processing.

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